This is an essay originally written for UC app. I am considering put it into other use. So, bring on any criticism. Thx in Advance!
Prompt:Describe the world you come from - for example, your family, community or school - and tell us how your world has shaped your dreams and aspirations.
TEXT:
A hill sat against our front door. On any mid-autumn day when the sun was mild and his heart light, father and I would go over the range to a patch of clearing on the south slope. We would sit down and chat.
The fading sun dyed sky violet. A kite, ocean blue with a white tail, floated into our sight, twirling, descending and was about to land. Two kids ran after it, laughing, screaming and jumping.
Father fell silent.
I smiled, looking up, father was too: a shallow smile, hardly visible.
Father came in the city ghetto, in a flat a little bigger than a toilet. For the first years of his life, father did his homework under blinking candles. Grandma had no job; the family lived on grandpa's modest salary and the days were harsh. On his 10th birthday, father sobbed to grandpa because grandma's decision for him to drop school. Grandpa frowned. He asked father: "Do you really want school?"
Father nodded.
"Then you are allowed to go."
Grandpa smiled. Father cried.
33 years had passed since that cry; one thing never wavered was that smile: bachelor, master and PhD, father always pursued the dream that smile had promised, like what he always told me: "People are allowed to run for any dream that fall on them, like kids running for a kite."
Dreams make life a kaleidoscope, colorful kites in a mild mid-autumn sky. I saw this one was falling, up in the sky, with a golden bear pattern.
And I run for it.
I run.
-THE END-
